


The Same as It Ever Was

by Viridian5



Category: Andromeda
Genre: Dark fic, Drama, Eureka Maru, Gen, Pre-Andromeda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-03-13
Updated: 2003-03-13
Packaged: 2017-10-02 09:45:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viridian5/pseuds/Viridian5
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s part self-defense and part taking out the trash.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Same as It Ever Was

**Author's Note:**

> Tiny spoiler for "The Pearls That Were His Eyes."
> 
> A pre-Andromeda story, and not a pretty one. It elaborates on some events Harper briefly mentioned in my slash story "[Familiar](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4850)."

"I’m bored," Beka’s latest dick, Edourd, said.

Could she pick a useful one for once? Useful to me, I meant, since I knew how they were useful to her. "Bored?" I asked, incredulous. "There are 5,000 things to do on the Maru. Pick one."

"I know what I want to do."

I could feel him looming behind me. This couldn’t be good. "Then what are you bothering me for, Eddie?" Maybe he’d try to smack me around again, something he’d succeeded at twice.

Years ago I’d stopped bothering to tell Beka when her dicks got violent with me. I hated being called a liar while telling the truth. Being jealous didn’t automatically make me a liar.

I only had a manual screwdriver in my hand, but applied to the right place on a human body, a screwdriver could do good damage.

I moved as I felt him move, but he swept me in close and put me right into a chokehold. It shouldn’t be possible for a guy that big to move that fast, but Ubers and some of Beka’s dicks could manage it. When he pressed me back against his body, I could feel his erection against my side. Fuck. I hadn’t faced anything like this from one of the dicks in about two years.

"I wanna do you, kid. Who knows, you might even like it." Not that it mattered to him. He kept one arm around my neck, tightening it when I kicked or punched, and unfastened his pants with his other hand. With how smoothly he did it, he must have done this kind of shit before. "Beka’s not here, so you can yell as much as you like."

Maybe I should have expected this, since Eddie was a walking hard-on, ever ready. Beka had a life of things to do beyond satisfying this bastard, so he had to get it from somewhere else, and I was a convenient hole.

If I claimed I liked it, he might get disgusted and leave me alone. Or he might shrug and stick it to me anyway. Couldn’t take the chance. I saw my nanowelder a meter away to our right. If I could get free, I should jump in that direction.

I thought furiously: Best way to play this, best way to play this.... "Please don’t hurt me," I said, my voice sounding husky from the pressure on my throat. Eddie just about purred. Yeah, power and sex made this brand of asshole’s world go ‘round.

I loved Beka, but sometimes I really hated her.

"I’d make you suck my dick, but I’d worry about your teeth. You’re a savage little thing. I think I’ll just fuck you. It’ll be good if you don’t move, but if you try anything I’ll fuck you up bad." His hands scrabbled at my pants.

Beka’s dicks came in two basic flavors: fast-talking sleazy-slick and musclehead. She preferred the first--the better for them to fit in with the ever-crooked Valentine family--but Eddie sat firmly in the second category. He probably figured he was being subtle here.

Usually, dressing like a scruffy 12-year-old with no taste spared me from this kind of shit, but my looks didn’t matter here, where I was just a hole. It was like being on Earth, where all kludges looked alike.

I hoped his grip loosened at some point, and not just because my chest hurt from getting less oxygen than it needed. If he stripped my ass bare and just thrust into me while standing, I was screwed. Literally. Nah, with our height differences he’d have to position me and hold me up, and that would be work.

Once he yanked my pants down, his arm loosened a little as he started telling me what I had to do to get fucked and survive, but I wasn’t listening. I broke free and stumbled to my nanowelder at high speed. Then I aimed, closed my eyes to protect them, and let it rip. Yeah, scream, fucker. I opened my eyes when the screaming stopped.

Wow, that must have hurt. He had holes in his crotch. Some of the flesh had been fused in places. I’d damaged the floor and the far wall a bit, but I could cover that. Good thing the Maru already looked so jury-rigged, because its appearance hid plenty of sins.

Eddie couldn’t get much deader. At least with all the damage he’d taken he hadn’t been able to shit or wet himself, because I’d spent enough time cleaning up his messes in the last week. Useless sack of....

But now I had to cover my own ass, even aside from putting my pants back on. Beka didn’t know that I’d been weeding out some of the worst of her dicks over the years, and I didn’t want her to find out. At least I didn’t usually have to do it so personally. Most of the time setting the law or their former partners on them did the job nicely.

It was my job to keep everything on the Maru working properly, and I saw this kind of taking out the trash as a part of it.

Eddie needed to be found dead in some way that wouldn’t come back to me and wouldn’t make him poor, martyred Eddie. Think, think... got it.

I’d still have to put a new pair of pants on him to hide the damage. Damn.

As I dragged him toward the cockpit, I wondered why the hell Beka couldn’t go for a skinny guy once in a while.

Why the hell couldn’t she go for me?

  


* * *

"Harper!" I heard her yell. Sounded like showtime.

I skidded to a halt next to her in the cockpit. "Yeah, boss-- Oh shit."

"He was trying to rewrite the Maru’s security codes. That idiot piece of trash!" she yelled, then kicked the corpse.

"Looks like his reach exceeded his grasp," I answered. "I think it’s safe to stick a fork in him."

I’d made it look like he’d tried to do some primitive rewiring and electrocuted the hell out of himself. Most of his hair had burnt off, creating a lingering stench, but it covered the stink from the nanowelding and Beka wouldn’t be inclined to check his privates this way.

"Dammit," she said, half-angry and half-depressed. "Why does my taste in men suck so much?"

"You’re asking the wrong person, babe."

"Thanks."

I blamed her father and her brother. "Don’t mention it."

"He’s going into the airlock. When we get far enough out, I’m spacing him. I’m so glad Rev is on retreat, because he’d want us to say a prayer or some shit. How could Eddie do this to me?"

I stifled the urge to say that I wouldn’t have thought he was bright enough to try this because he wasn’t and I didn’t want to remind her of that. He would have found a way to betray her sooner or later, because his type always turned on her, but it would have been a musclehead way, not something that required a brain.

"Let me pick up the trash for you," I said.

"Harper, what’s that? On your wrist."

When I’d moved forward to grab his arm, my sleeves had pulled up to reveal a bruise circling my left wrist. It couldn’t look like anything other than the mark of having been clasped way too hard and tight by somebody. "Eddie being playful a few days ago." At least his playful hold around my neck hadn’t left a mark.

She looked worried. "You don’t even bring this kind of thing up to me anymore."

Oh for crying out loud. "Never did any good. Just because I’m jealous doesn’t mean I’m lying, but hey, what do I know?"

She put her hand against the side of my face, and I leaned into it, like the sucker of love that I was. "I’m sorry, Harper. This kind of shit won’t happen again."

Of course it would. Beka couldn’t help herself. Her dad had been a junkie, and this was her version. I tried to swallow down the lump in my throat. "Sure, Beka. How about next time you go for useful instead of decorative?"

 

### End


End file.
